"In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year."
Having heard so much about this novel, as soon as I opened up the first page, I began devouring it to no end. The two stories of Darcy Patel and Lizzie that spanned over the course of about 600 pages took me less than a day to read, and then it was up to me todecide how I felt about this book exactly. Let me begin by saying this: Scott Westerfeld is a literary mastermind. The book, whilst being rather large and if you choose to read the page count, intimidating, was a book that I was able to breeze through despite its thickness. It was only afterwards that I began to wonder why I was so engrossed in this novel. The answer to that became very clear very quickly. It was informative.
Now, this may seem like a sort of gray area when it comes to novels. Often, you are supposed to be driven to finish the book because of either characters, setting, narrative or a combination of the three, however, upon reading this book, I felt that those three elements took backstage to the insight into the life of a young adult novelist. In fact, Lizzie's section of the novel barely held my attention, and I often found myself anxiously waiting for the next installment of Darcy's story. This novel read more like a documentary to me; Darcy's chapters were more educational than anything, and although I enjoyed them thoroughly, it did bother me a bit that the narrative aspect of the story wasn't encouraging me to finish this book.
Despite this, Scott Westerfeld manages to capture his audience's attention with this captivating writing style that effectively envelops the reader into the protagonist's thoughts. During each and every scene in this novel, there was no question as to how either Darcy or Lizzie felt about a situation and often readers are given enough information as to understand the reasons behind the characters' actions and reactions. It is an extremely involved experience and a difficult technique that Scott Westerfeld executes masterfully. Truly something to be commended and respected in one of the New York Times #1 best-selling authors.
The romances in this novel were a contrast for me. Whilst Lizzie's love interest was apparent from the very first chapter, Darcy's love interest took me by surprise. I have to say that Darcy's romance definitely read as something more realistic and heartfelt than Lizzie's; however, as Lizzie's story is subject to several of the young adult fiction tropes, I cannot blame Scott Westerfeld for writing it as such. Darcy's life overall in this novel is realism accelerated. Her novel is published much faster than the average rate at publishing houses and she is able to become comfortable in the world of a debut author quite quickly. Despite this though, readers are able to gain a deep enough understanding of the publishing business to realise that no aspect of publishing a book is easy. Drafts and rewrites will consume a lot of your time and often, you will be criticised on the smallest of things in your novel. This book is essentially a wake-up call for aspiring authors and debut novelists who are struggling to comprehend their new lifestyle. This is particularly true of larger publishing companies that choose to undertake new and upcoming authors for publication.
There is no doubt that this novel certainly served its purpose well. It read well and captivated its readers all the way through, however, there were a few aspects of fiction writing (ironically, mentioned in the book) that this novel fell shy of, which left me slightly disappointed as I see Scott Westerfeld as a wonderful fiction writer. However, if I were to be asked whether or not this book is worth the read, I would definitely say that it is. Especially for any of those who wish to become published one day, or even anyone who is remotely interested in this field of work. For those people, this novel will become an invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration. One thing left to consider, though.
Is it necessarily a good thing if I am able to compare a young adult fiction novel to a book on writing craft?
Overall Rating: 4/5 stars
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